Writing – Page 40 – a sibilant intake of breath

Timing an Ignite presentation

I am in the process of preparing an Ignite presentation on climate change, expressing the basic point that the amount of climate change we experience will depend primarily on what proportion of the world’s fossil fuels we burn.

The Ignite format is an odd and challenging one. Each person speaks for five minutes. At the same time, each has a set of 20 slides which automatically advance every 15 seconds. These factors make it challenging to express yourself clearly and effectively.

The earliest drafts of my presentation suffered from my natural tendency towards digression. I am moving forward now more confidently, having timed myself reading four examples of text for five minutes each. Two were written by me, two were speeches written by others.

I found that I read text similar to that in my presentation at a rate just over 180 words per minute. That translates to about 45 words per slide. To compensate for any issues with shuffling notes or distractions, I will write 40 words of pre-prepared comments to accompany each slide, reducing the risk that the unusual Ignite format will leave me unable to express my point fully.

[Update: 5 May 2010] You can see my final presentation on BuryCoal.com.

Oliver Twist

The latest audiobook I have worked by way through in snatches while walking or taking the bus was Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. The version I listened to was provided by the same University of Southern Florida program I mentioned previously. The files are available for free online.

The book is a decidedly interesting one, and an worthwhile commentary on such matters as class relations and the nature of crime. At the very least, it is worth listening to or reading the first few chapters. They are an excellent satirical denunciation of the English Poor Laws, which I would say has contemporary relevance as well:

For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in ‘the house’ who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.

Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for, the experimental philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.

This sort of treatment is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift, and seems to be quite an effective form of social criticism. Rather than make a direct argument that a particular approach is unethical, you can defend the approach in such a preposterous way as to convey that message indirectly.

One thing I found odd about listening to the book was the antisemitic treatment of the character Fagin. Fagin is very frequently referred to as “The Jew” and it is at least implied that part of the reason for his criminal and unethical behaviour is tied to his Judaism. As a child, I was never exposed to any writing in which a character was portrayed as especially wicked, partly as a result of being Jewish. Indeed, I came across the concept of antisemitism academically long before I saw any examples of it in fiction or real world discourses. Possibly because of that, it has always struck me as an absurd point of view. I wonder whether exposing children to books like Oliver Twist subtly pre-conditions them to find antisemitism a plausible point of view.

Normally, I am very much of the view that censorship is an odious practice, even when supposedly done for the benefit of children. That being said, it does seem regrettable that literature might act as a vector for the transmission of baseless ideas from one generation and set of social circumstances to another.

Singh appeal successful

In a very welcome development, science writer Simon Singh (discussed twice before in relation to alternative medicine) has won his appeal against the libel suit brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. It was brave of him to launch the appeal, with all the further financial harm that would have accompanied another loss. Getting to this stage involved legal costs of £200,000. The whole kerfuffle was spawned when Singh wrote in an article that chiropractors promoted ‘bogus’ treatments, for which there was no scientific evidence of effectiveness. This statement was interpreted very strangely by a judge at an earlier stage in these legal proceedings, leading to much of the subsequent trouble.

This is a victory for free speech, sanity, and open inquiry. Hopefully, it will also free up some of Mr. Singh’s time to write more excellent books.

British Chiropractic Association President Richard Brown has said that they may appeal to the Supreme Court.

[Update: 11:20am] The ruling is online and worth a look. It contains some strong wording, along the lines of: “to compel its author to prove in court what he has asserted by way of argument is to invite the court to become an Orwellian ministry of truth.”

Climate change severity levels

In the interests of using language clearly and consistently, when talking about climate change, I have written up some personal definitions over at BuryCoal.com. Specifically, I have defined what I mean when I talk about ‘dangerous,’ ‘catastrophic,’ and ‘runaway’ climate change.

I hope the post will serve the dual purpose of helping to encourage effective conversation – in which all participants understand one another clearly – and of reminding people just what a serious problem we are dealing with, when it is necessary to define such terms and consider the implications of such phenomena.

Sherlock Holmes and Huckleberry Finn

During the past week or so, I listened to my first two audiobooks ever. Previously, I had been quite skeptical. To me, podcasts and the like seem to require too much concentration for use when doing anything complicated, but to not really be engaging enough to hold your attention when you are doing nothing else.

Both issues have been problematic sometimes, when listening to the free copies of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that I got from the excellent iTunes U section of Apple’s music store. I sometimes had to rewind (what an anachronistic term!) and re-listen when something distracted me. Much more rarely, I found the contents insufficiently engrossing, though Ernest Hemingway is surely correct to say that the last few chapters of Huckleberry Finn are a severe disappointment.

Both books are part of the University of South Florida’s Lit2Go collection, and they are well (though I think not professionally) read. Each is read by a single person, without much attempt made at voices or radio-play style effects. I found that both books lent themselves well to this treatment, owing perhaps to their relative simplicity and the charming datedness and foreignness of the voices in them. The books can be downloaded here and here, as well as through iTunes.

I doubt that the audiobook treatment would be as well suited to something really complex and intellectual, of the sort where you frequently need to make notes or refer back and forth through the book. Nonetheless, the audiobook medium does seem like a good one for the casual enjoyment of relatively light fiction.

Personal experiences with coal

Willa Johnson has written an interesting post about her personal experience with coal, an industry which her family works in but which she now opposes.

Much of it focuses on the apparent tension between dealing with climate change and addressing unemployment:

People say that I am ungrateful and that I don’t understand, but I do. I grew up with my house shaking from the explosions blowing the mountainside off. I know what it feels like not to be able to breathe the air on certain days because it is so thick with dust.

But layoffs are spreading across the region, and local activists like me are feeling the heat. Summer barbecues are tense when the person sitting across the table from you just lost the mining job that you spend a great amount of time speaking against. It’s not easy feeling like you’re fighting the people you love.

What makes the emotional situation here so unbalanced is the contrast between the powerfully immediate (though ambiguous) physical and economic impacts of coal mining, and the distant but invisible consequences of the emissions being generated. The former has a much greater capacity to engage human emotions than the latter, despite how the latter is a consequence on a much larger scale. Also, the sheer wretchedness of the local destruction caused by coal mining somewhat tempers the tendency to accuse the people in these communities of being gross abusers of the rights of innocent people around the world, and in future generations. While there is some truth to that perspective, people in coal mining communities are clearly victims too.

In any event, it highlights how pragmatic approaches to escaping fossil fuel dependence will require special assistance for those most directly affected by the transition.

Incidentally, it would be wonderful if some people with personal experience with the coal industry could contribute some posts to BuryCoal.com. The site would surely be enriched by the addition of some less distant perspectives.

More on Singh and libel

In a development that annoys me as much as one of my favourite novels being banned in some libraries, one of my favourite authors of non-fiction has been bullied out of having time to write columns for The Guardian by the British Chiropractic Association and the awful libel laws of the United Kingdom. It also seems probable that his book projects would be more advanced, if not for this pointless and anti-democratic headache.

Singh has been courageous enough to appeal the painful initial decision against his entirely fair and justified comments, as well as try to kick off a public movement to change the laws in the UK. The need to do so is broadly recognized, with several other jurisdictions having already passed laws to protect their citizens from ‘libel tourists’ who use the UK to file baseless or frivolous claims. Newspapers including the Boston Globe and New York Times have also complained about how British law imposes on them unjustifiably.

Having a free and democratic society depends on being able to express honestly-held and justified opinions without fear that someone will exploit the law to silence you. Hopefully, the lawmakers in the UK will change tack, reform their laws, and apologize to those who have been harmed by them already. We might also hope that people will recognize that the chiropractic view that all disease is caused by ‘subluxations’ in the spine is baseless quackery (a claim far bolder and less exhaustively justified than the one that got Singh in all this trouble).

Why We Disagree About Climate Change

My review of Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity has been published in the most recent issue of the Saint Antony’s International Review (STAIR). It is the fourth review down, starting on the eighth page of the PDF.

I found the book interesting, but too heavily focused on the psychological ramifications of climate change, compared with the real physical effects. To summarize:

In addition to being an observable physical phenomenon, climate change has taken on a broad range of social, political, and even theological meanings. Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change seeks to chart out the major lines of argumentation that have emerged around the subject, as well as to consider the implications that flow from them, both in terms of climate policy and in terms of broader matters of ethics and public policy. Ultimately, Hulme argues that “climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape” (p. 326). The range of discourses Hulme considers is restricted to a particular segment of the overall climate change debate—specifically, those contributors to the debate who accept three scientific touchstones: that greenhouse gases affect the climate system, the recorded rise in global temperatures, and the possibility of non-linear responses in the climate system. Restricting the scope of consideration in this way allows Hulme to exclude viewpoints that have no scientific basis. However, doing so also precludes examination of all relevant actors in the global political discussion about climate change policy. While Hulme effectively examines the social, cultural, and political aspects of climate change, he may inappropriately downplay the observed and possible future physical consequences resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.

The book is worthwhile for those with a major interest in the subject area, but I do not consider it to be one of the key texts on the science and policy of climate change.

Previously, STAIR published an article of mine about nuclear power.

After the Ice

Having already read a great deal about climate change and the Arctic, I expected Alun Anderson’s After the Ice: Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic to provide only a moderate quantity of new information. I was quite surprised by just how much novel, relevant, and important content he was able to fit into the 263 pages. The book discusses the historical and current relations between governments and Arctic indigenous peoples; ice flow dynamics and exploration; the changing nature of Arctic ecosystems and species, along with information on what climate change may do to them; international law and the geopolitical implications of a melting Arctic; oil, gas, and other natural resources, and how their availability is likely and unlikely to change in coming decades; the rising tide of Arctic shipping, and the special safety and environmental considerations that accompany it; and the feedback effects that exist between a changing Arctic and a changing climate.

Ecosystems

Some of the best information on the book is about biology and Arctic ecosystems. It describes them from the level of microscopic photosynthetic organisms up to the level of the megafauna that gets so much attention. Anderson argues that most of the large marine mammals (seals, walruses, whales, etc) are threatened to some extent or another by the loss of sea ice. This is for several reasons. First, it could disrupt the lowest levels of the food web they rely upon. Second, it could permit the influx of invasive species that could out-compete, starve, or attack existing Arctic species. Third, the lifecycles of Arctic animals are slow and deliberate, and thus liable to disruption from faster-breeding competitors. Disappearing sea ice off Svalbard has already completely wiped out what was once “one of the best areas for ringed seal reproduction.” Arctic species, argues Anderson, will need to “move, adapt, or die.” Generalists like beluga whales have promise, while the narwhal and polar bear may be the most vulnerable large creature in the ecosystem.

One consequence of the loss of multi-year sea ice that I had not anticipated is the potential for a massive migration of species between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with invasive species potentially seriously altering the composition of ecosystems on both sides. Melting ice could therefore produce major changes in much of the world’s ocean. Even before that, expanded range for orcas could have a significant effect on life in northern waters. Where ice used to provide safety, by obstructing their pectoral fins, these powerful predators increasingly have free reign.

Resources, shipping, and tourism

Anderson makes an effective argument that most of the oil, gas, and resources in the Arctic will be effectively locked away for some time yet. There will always be ice in the winters, glacial ice calving off Greenland and other Arctic islands poses a significant risk due to its extreme hardness, and very high commodity prices are necessary to justify the risk and capital investment required to operate in the region. (See this post on the the Shtokman gas field.) He expects that, even if there is a boom, it will be short-lived and of limited benefit to those living in the region. In particular, he cautions people living in the north not to abandon traditional ways of life sustained by things other than oil and gas. Living for a couple of rich decades and then being left with nothing would be a tragic outcome.

The book also downplays fears about a scramble for resources and sovereign control. Anderson argues that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) already provides a clear legal framework and that negotiated outcomes are probable. That should provide some comfort to those concerned about diplomatic or even armed conflicts in the changing north. One danger Anderson does highlight is how the risk of collision with ice, increasing shipping and tourist traffic, and the absence of emergency response capabilities could combine. He describes plausible scenarios where major oil spills or massive loss of life could result, due to a problem with a tanker or a cruise ship (disproportionately full of elderly people susceptible to cold, as they are).

While Anderson does an excellent job of explaining some of the risks to species and human beings from a changing Arctic, he doesn’t take seriously the possibility of truly radical or catastrophic change, of the kind highlighted as possible by James Hansen. Anderson also completely fails to describe how the incremental emissions from burning oil and gas in the Arctic would inevitably increase the degree of climate change experienced by humans and natural systems. It is cumulative emissions that matter most, and extracting hydrocarbons from the far north can only increase those.

For anyone with an interest in what is happening to the Arctic and what the medium- and long-term implications of that might be, this book is enthusiastically recommended.

On academic specialization and climate change

I have spent six years in university and taken two degrees: a B.A. with majors in International Relations and Political Science and an M.Phil in International Relations. The logical academic progression, if I were to continue, would be to do a Ph.D or D.Phil. That would take between 2+ (Oxford D.Phil) and 4+ (North American Ph.D) years, but I have my doubts about whether that would be the best use of time. The 2+ is generous for Oxford, given that my thesis was the weakest part of the work I did there. I would need a more solid research project to form the basis of a doctorate.

Doing a doctorate in something like I.R. or PoliSci would certainly involve some new learning: perhaps some more quantatative and qualitative methods, certainly more exposure to theory and a particular subject area for a dissertation. It would increase how much I know about PoliSci/I.R. compared with other people who have studied in those fields.

By contrast, spending 3-4 years studying something like engineering, law, or a pure science would certainly teach me more, relative to what I know now. It would involve whole new methodologies and areas of knowledge. By any objective measure, it would widen my knowledge enormously more than doing more work on PoliSci/I.R.

That said, academia isn’t like trivia; your ranking isn’t based on your relative level of knowledge on a broad range of subjects. Rather, the stature of students is determined by how much they know compared with their peers (and, between real academics, on the basis of publication history).

At this time, I don’t have any interest in trying to rise up in academia. It would surely be a tedious endeavour, full of weird infighting and ever-increasing specialization. My ambition, at this point, is to try to make a difference in how humanity responds to the threat of climate change.

Measured against that objective, the question ceases to be about the relative abstract knowledge value of study in different areas. To me, it seems clear that more PoliSci/I.R. work would be fairly pointless. Some sort of technical study could be useful, depending on how exactly I want to work on climate change. For instance, an engineering degree would give me a better ability to evaluate ideas about energy sources, efficiency, conservation, and so forth.

Despite that, when it comes to lack of action on climate change, I don’t think a lack of technical experts is our problem. We have the knowledge and skills to start building a low-carbon global economy. What we lack is the drive to do so. That drive is unlikely to arise out of academic study, and greater technical knowledge may not provide any insights into how to generate it. Focused on that issue, spending a few more years cloistered in school doesn’t seem like a good way to advance my objective.

Everything about climate change is steeped in uncertainty. Just as we cannot know in advance how the climate system will respond to our actions, we cannot fully anticipate how entrenched human systems will respond to any sort of effort to change them. For now, the best approach seems to be a combination of branching out (to pursue multiple strategies) and determination.

That said, if it ever seems like the world has finally gotten itself off a course towards destruction, it would be nice to go back and study something interesting for the sake of knowledge itself. It would also be around that time that I thought it was fair and potentially sensible to have children. Right now, we would be introducing them into a world fraught with such terrible risk that I question the ethics of doing so.